One rainy night in Georgia when I was 9 years old, I discovered that music magically radiated from a clock/radio in my bedroom. This was 1974 so you have to recognize this was before the cell phone and internet as well as pre-satellite television. Dinosaurs had only been extinct for 6 months. I lived in a sheltered zone of carefree and comfort with my family, my baseball cards and a black and white spotted Cocker Spaniel named Sam.

On that particular night I discovered the radio function on the device that was stationed in the corner of my bedroom. My knowledge of music to that point was limited to church hymns and car radio broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry on WSM that my dad listened to while smoking El Productos on family trips to Tennessee. The 1960s may have happened in the greater beyond but they hadn't, to that point, spilled through the doors of my bedroom.

But the 1970s infiltrated behind suburban bedroom lines like a revolutionary insurgent on that particular evening. I remember there was a raucous thunderstorm outside my window that created an electric atmosphere within my bedroom to match the storm outside. I twirled the knob on the radio to see what I could find.  

I heard this:

The horse trotting chords repetitively struck as the Midnight Rider galloped across southern central Georgia, invading my bedroom and haunting it with his harmony and anti-hero ethos. Actually it was the harmony of Georgia's own Allman Brothers but for my kid brain it was a one man band and the performer was the Midnight Rider.

Who was this Midnight Rider? Why did he have just one more silver dollar? He sounded dusty and thirsty and that left me thirsty, parched for more.

I was just a kid but upon hearing this song...